Portrait And Biographical Record Of Northern Michigan
Containing Portraits And Biographical Sketches Of Prominent
And Representative Citizens
Chicago
Record Publishing Co., 1895

Edward Killean, owner of the Dunham House of Manistee, is one of the
most popular hotelmen of Michigan, and having been engaged in the business
for thirty-three years has gained a thorough knowledge of all its details
and a large acquaintance among the traveling public. The Dunham is complete
in all its appointments and first class in every respect. There are eighty
guest rooms, all heated with steam and lighted with electricity, direct
communication being furnished with the office by means of electric and return
call bells and fire-alarm system.

The writer is constantly on the road, usually seeking the best hotels for
a temporary home, but has never found a better one than the Dunham for its
general accommodation and comfort of its guests, who are daily supplied with
the choicest products of the markets, the forest and the lakes. The attendants,
of whom there are thirty, are courteous and attentive. A capacious office
is only one of the many comforts to be found, among which may be enumerated
the reading-room, parlors and library.

As may be inferred from the foregoing brief description, the Dunham has the
transient trade almost exclusively, and happy is the commercial traveler
if he can make Manistee for Sunday. The proprietor of the hotel, to whose
efforts its popularity is largely due, was born in Evans, fourteen miles
from Buffalo, N.Y., December 10, 1838. He remained on his father's farm until
he was twenty-one years of age, at which time, in 1859, he came to Michigan
and settled in Grand Haven, then a small frontier village. There he built
the Milwaukee, and afterward the Kirby House, containing sixty rooms, and
embarked in the hotel business, continuing there until 1880. Removing at
that time to Grand Rapids, he became proprietor of the Clarendon Hotel, which
he conducted until 1893, and in July of that year came to Manistee. On becoming
the proprietor of the Dunham House he remodeled the building, put in new
furniture, and made a number of valuable improvements, which add to the comfort
of the guests.

While a resident of New York Mr. Killean married Miss Margaret Sullivan,
and two children were born to them. The son, John E., is assistant manager
of the Dunham. The daughter is the wife of E.B. Seymour, a commission merchant
of Grand Rapids.